Mary Russel - Dreamers of the Day

All of which is why I am not embarrassed to tell you now that my decision to go to Egypt was set in motion by the eerie male voice I heard in the darkened room of a glassily bejeweled woman who called herself Madame Sophie. “Years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did,” the disembodied gentleman predicted. “Throw off the bowlines! Sail away from the safe harbor, madam! A sea voyage is what you need!”

“That is the spirit of Mr. Mark Twain,” Madame Sophie whispered, leaning over the fringed paisley shawl that covered a small round table. “He was a skeptic in life, but he visits me frequently.”

Well, I don’t know about that, I thought, but I listened anyway because, like Mildred’s, this voice too insisted that I travel, that I see the world from a different perspective. And a coincidence like that seemed the sort of thing to which one had to pay attention.

“Mr. Twain,” I said, feeling more than a little foolish, “while I am a great admirer of your work … Well, sir, since the influenza, I—I dream of drowning, and sailing would be—”

“—just the thing!” he exclaimed. “Like getting back up onto a horse after you’ve been thrown.”

Then it happened. Clear as a bell, I heard Lillie’s dear remembered voice. The best time for Cairo is March, she said. And then go on to Jerusalem, as I did …

You can wear the silk charmeuse, Mildred added.

“What about Rosie?” I asked, my hand running down her back as she snuggled in my lap. “I have a small dog—”

“That will be no problem at all!” the putative Mr. Twain assured me warmly. “Take her with you, dear lady. All the best ocean liners are delighted to accommodate the pets of valued guests such as yourself.”

Of course, it didn’t take a great deal in the way of deductive reasoning to work out that Madame Sophie was the inamorata of a gentleman who ran the Thomas Cook Travel Agency, located one door down the corridor from her second-floor salon, but I simply didn’t care. Within the hour, I had booked passage on a steamship to Egypt. And then? I drove directly from Cook’s to Halle’s to consult Mildred about a wardrobe for warm weather, and bought a beautiful set of matched luggage to contain it.

As you can imagine, Mumma argued nonstop, the whole day long. It’s nerves, she said as I steered the electric off Carnegie and angled up the hill toward Cedar Glen. You’ve no regular work, nothing to take you outside yourself. You have a great deal to be grateful for, right here at home, young lady.

I’ve been good all my life, I told myself and Mumma. I’ve been oh, so good for oh, so long! Just once, I’d like to trade good for happy.

I suppose now you’ll tell me you can buy happiness.

Not happiness, but maybe a little fun.

But Egypt, of all places! You’ll get a disease. You’ll be kidnapped by white slavers !

Lillie and Douglas did just fine there. Maybe I’ll be a missionary. Why, I could teach at the mission school in Jebail.

Well! Mumma didn’t know about that .

Neither did I, truth be told. I had never fully shared Lillian’s joyous, confident faith, although I did believe in God. Indeed, as the weeks passed and my departure date neared, I knew I ought to ask for divine guidance, but my courage failed me. What if God answered? What if He agreed with Mumma?

The thought of renouncing this trip made me go cold and dark inside, but when I looked at my new luggage and contemplated packing it with all the lovely flattering things Mildred had helped me pick out, oh my! I felt like Moses’ staff—like a dead stick miraculously bursting with new possibilities.

I felt … happy.

And afraid. And guilty, but excited as well.

Yes. More than anything: excited.

On the Monday before I sailed, I withdrew a great deal of money from my bank account. I had prepared answers to the questions I expected, but the teller had no clue that I was doing something wildly self-indulgent, nor would he have cared had he known. My next stop was the post office, where I gave instructions to hold deliveries, and felt compelled to explain, “I’m going away for a few months. To Egypt, actually.”

“Oh, how nice,” the postmaster said. “Next!”

Then it was on to the law office of Mr. Reichardt to make arrangements for my absence. I expected a lecture on thrift and the husbandry of my funds. “Do you a world of good,” he said instead. “Send me a postcard, Miss Shanklin.”

In fact, no one seemed shocked or even very interested in my plans. That, in itself, was strangely thrilling. Nobody came to see me and Rosie off either, and that was rather sad.

We boarded the eastbound train on a blustery, wet evening in early March. The bad weather chased us, arriving in New York City just as we did. The storm intensified as we transferred from train to steamship in a taxicab, its windows fogged and smeared by sheets of freezing rain.

Things got even worse as we sailed, and the crossing was atrocious. Furious winds drove the rain with such force that it splashed down gangways and ran into corridors, bringing on panicky thoughts of the Titanic . Together, Rosie and I learned what “sick as a dog” really meant. I never ate at the captain’s table. Indeed, we hardly ever left our cabin, and when we did, I was definitely not wearing the silk charmeuse. When I had the influenza, I struggled to live, but seasickness made me yearn for a pistol.

That’s what you get for listening to shopgirls and fortune-tellers, Mumma said, satisfied to see me pay a price for my willfulness.

Finally, as we neared the coast of Europe, the tempest blew itself out. My stomach, and Rosie’s, settled. One fine morning, we left our cramped cabin and walked out onto the promenade deck, feeling rather well. There we discovered that some confidence trick of climate and current had delivered us into a full and bracing spring.

That night we steamed past Gibraltar: a towering black shape studded with tiny, twinkling lights. The next morning we slid by Spain, where the peaks of the Sierra Nevada loomed over the jagged summits of the Alpujarras. A day more, and the lavender rocks of Sardinia appeared. Forty-eight hours in Naples, to take on coal in the shadow of Vesuvius, and it was onward toward a dawn that revealed golden Mediterranean isles, shadowed in amethyst, set in a sea of sapphire and diamond.

Gray winter weather, selfless good works, the opinions of others— all these faded like the dim memories of a fever dream.

I listened hard but heard only my own thoughts, or perhaps those of my ancestors when they made the Atlantic crossing westward. No one at home knows where I am or what I am doing. No one here knows who or what I am, or have been, or shall be.

At last, the splendor of my audacity began to warm me. I lifted Rosie into my arms and turned my face east, toward a dazzling sunrise.

I can do anything I please, I thought, and no one at home need ever know what I’ve been up to.

“We’re free,” I whispered to my little friend.

Free. Free. Free …

ACCEPT FROM ME, PLEASE, a bit of timeless travel advice. Should you inquire about a potential difficulty during a journey, beware the agent who assures you, “Sir,”—or Madam— “that will be no problem at all.”

What he means is, “Sir,”—or Madam—“I personally shall not be troubled in the slightest by what you anticipate. When you encounter it, I shall be safe at home, and snug in my own bed.”

To be fair, I had only asked “Mr. Twain” if there would be a problem traveling with my dog. I had not thought to inquire about being admitted to my hotel room in Cairo with Rosie at my side.